Observations and concerns in the decline in local journalism
Local news coverage has dipped significantly, with more and more newsrooms across the country being forced to close their doors. With conglomerate owners seeking profit above all else, and technology distracting viewers, there’s a lot of questions that need to be solved within the local news industry.
According to FiveThirtyEight and the Pew Research Center, newsroom employment dropped by around 51% from 2008–2019. This is more obvious in some communities that have seen small newspaper forced to merge just to remain in business.
An example I found in my local community was the merger of three newspapers. In July of 2020, the Maryland Independent, The Enterprise and The Calvert Recorder were merged into one paper, that published once a week. The announcement came out of nowhere and was shocking, as The Enterprise had been in publication since 1883, twice weekly.
Margaret Sullivan, former editor of The New York Times discussed the decline in local news coverage. Sullivan mentioned that when she was the feature editor for The Buffalo News there were plenty of reporters for just that section. Now, that section no longer exists due to the decline in positions in the paper, and she admitted that she feels the paper is sorely missing it.
Corporate ownership and consolidation of local media outlets also plays a part in the state that local journalism finds itself in.
Noah Sutton, from University Wire, said “local reporting is disappearing at an alarming rate, largely because its value as an essential news source is seen as secondary to its bottom line.”
When these corporations’ trim jobs, local reporting suffers. With less local reporting, if people want to turn to news organizations, they must go to more national publications. This increases polarization, because people then usually focus on a few national issues, rather than stuff that is going on in their community.
Sutton mentioned that while many smaller newspapers have failed to become profitable online, part of the blame falls on the corporation owners that have not addressed the situation.
There are a few different components to why local news has not generally excelled online.
Part of the problem is local news’ make-up staff-wise. Lots of staff in local journalist did not initially know how to implement reporting with technological innovations — such as the internet, cell phones and social media.
As journalists, we need to utilize these mediums to their fullest potential if we want to keep local news relevant. We cannot merely chuck newspaper text online, something that many newspapers did initially. You must change your report for the medium and failure to adapt will result in less viewership.
Next, the emergence of social media sites has distracted and stolen social media viewership. People can report things on their own on platforms like Twitter and YouTube, and this is a good thing. However, people began to rely on social media instead of news outlets.
There’s also a lot more going on. There are viral events around the world every day on these platforms and people follow this type of content more now than they do local newscasts.
Ultimately, local news must make some changes but there needs to be commitment from the top ownership to keep local news afloat.
Community journalism effects communities. Julie Makinen, executive editor of The Desert Sun, came up with an experiment: she dropped national politics from the opinion page for a month in 2019.
Mentions of political parties fell by more than half, and there was more content on local issues, that generally impacted the locality more than national issues. So yes, there’s proof that local outlets still have some impact on the community.
I’ve outlined it a bit earlier in this paper, but a society completely rid of local news is a polarized society. We’ve seen it more recently in the realms of politics.
As news organizations cover just a few national issues, more often now with two main viewpoints, people become engrossed in them, and division increases throughout the country. People are focusing on just a few select things and are ignoring most issues locally that will impact their everyday lives. They will be unable to look at local issues, which opens the door for local corruption to increase.
Generation Lab polled college students from Nov. 18–22 and found that 71% of democrats would not go on a date with a republican, and 31% the other way round. It’s seriously troubling that people get so bitter over politics.
The textbook mentions that people are generally more trusting of local news than national news outlets, because while national outlets tend to cater more toward certain agendas, local news has largely stayed focus on local news –- truthfully, much of daily life does not involve politics. So while local news will cover local government issues, it’s not going to make up much of the outlet’s content.
When people look more into local media, while it does not necessarily have profitability, it has value. It can prevent these polarization issues I have outlined, and it can make people have higher interest in their community and enable them to make their communities better places.
Local reporting is an essential part of nationalized coverage as well. Local news serves as a public record that larger outlets can refer to, and many national stories are initially local stories. If you lose the local news, you are bound to lose some stories that should probably be going national.
Potential Solutions.
Maybe more local news outlets will require money to access their content to raise profitability. I don’t like this idea because I think it cuts out a lot of the market. Some won’t be able to afford purchasing subscriptions and some will go to national outlets/social media instead.
An idea I prefer is subsidizing money to keep local news outlets afloat. This money probably should not come directly from the government, just to stay free of bias/conflict of interest.
Funds and donors are the primary way that I see local news maintaining its place. Money that is raised can go toward increased positions, increased salaries — to increase interest in said positions and toward the general operations of news outlets.
Works Cited.
Sources are organized in specific manner for purpose of class requirements of which this article was originally written for.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Sutton, Noah. “The Decline of Local News is a Problem for Everyone.” University Wire, Nov 28, 2017. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fwire-feeds%2Fdecline-local-news-is-problem-everyone%2Fdocview%2F1969004798%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D12085.
Tracy, Marc. “The Decline of Local News, Dissected by a Newspaper Veteran: [Business/Financial Desk].” New York Times, Jul 16, 2020. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fnewspapers%2Fdecline-local-news-dissected-newspaper-veteran%2Fdocview%2F2424002767%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D12085.
PROFESSIONALLY WRITTEN OPINION PIECE
Darr, Joshua. “Local News Coverage Is Declining — and That Could Be Bad for American Politics.” FiveThirtyEight, FiveThirtyEight, 2 June 2021, fivethirtyeight.com/features/local-news-coverage-is-declining-and-that-could-be-bad-for-american-politics/.
TEXTBOOK
Wenzel, Andrea. Community-Centered Journalism (p. 124). University of Illinois Press. Kindle Edition.
